Wednesday, April 5, 2017

Wind energy powers 136% of Scottish households

Yes, you read that right. Scotland produces more wind energy than is consumed by their homes, as FiveThirtyEight reports in its morning Significant Digits.

58 percentBring a windbreaker if you’re headed to Scotland anytime soon. Wind energy provided 1.2 million megawatt hours of electricity last month, more than enough to power all 3.3 million Scottish households and accounting for 58 percent of the country’s electrical needs. [The Independent]

Not exactly. Following are the numbers originally reported by The Independent.

Last month wind turbines provided enough energy to meet the electrical needs of 136 per cent of Scottish households, the equivalent of 3.3 million homes.

The actual number of Scottish homes works out to be 2.43 million. The excess goes to power Scottish non-residential energy needs.

Wind power generated the equivalent of 58 per cent of Scotland’s entire electricity needs for the month.

…Lang Banks, WWF Scotland’s director said “As well as helping to power our homes and businesses, wind power supports thousands of jobs and continues to play an important role in Scotland’s efforts to address global climate change by avoiding millions of tonnes of carbon emissions every year.”

And here at home? Our President makes promises that he will never keep to coal miners while retreating on environmental regulations. Renewable energy jobs are increasing, coal jobs are decreasing, and both trends will continue despite Trump’s tweaks and tweets. For the first, happily. For the second, sadly. For the man in the White House. Pitifully.